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barlevg writes "A college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute spent nine months meticulously remaking Super Mario Bros. based on the latest web standards. His project is open source and the code freely available through Github. The site recently gained widespread media attention, which unfortunately brought it to the attention of Nintendo, which has requested that the site be taken down. In a column on the Washington Post website, tech blogger Timothy Lee makes the case for how this is a prime example of copyrights hindering innovation and why copyright lengths should be shortened. Among his arguments: copyrights hinder innovation by game designers seeking to build upon such games, and shortening copyright would breathe new life into games who have long since passed into obsolescence."

Or, if you read the article, the idea is to use the game engine to develop new and original projects without having to write them from scratch.

It should be easy to strip out the Mario original levels, rename it, and (less easily) design new characters. I don't think the gameplay itself would be a problem, as there are numerous similar games around.

which is why Nintendo remakes games so often (Star Fox, Mario, Zelda, all had recent remakes from the N64 and Gamecube era).

Budding game designers get a chance to remake a game and release it it's a tremendous learning opportunity. It also provides them with a solid basis to launch new work.

As an Example, take the Giana sisters. Started as a Super Mario clone in the C64 era, but I don't think anyone would say this [youtube.com] has much of anything to do with Super Mario besides being a platformer.

Me? I could live with the long copyrights if we also had big social safety nets and Basic Income (google the phrase if you don't recognize it). A lot of great stuff comes out of Canada and Europe because their socialized health care gives people the freedom to take risks you can't do in the states...

I could live with the long copyrights if we also had big social safety nets and Basic Income

But why should you??? There is no silver lining to copyright. Its intentions aside, there is absolutely no proof
that it spurs innovation or creativity, whichever industry you look in, whatever the term, and however you quantify
the goods. And economists looked into this [ucla.edu]
many times by now. So our best economics research tells us that the ONLY perceptible effect of copyright is censorship,
which is a BREAK on creativity and innovation, and an infringement on our rights as humans, as outlined in the UDHR.

It's not primarily game design which is driving the remakes. It's IP - Intellectual Properties. Brand recognition. THAT's what those games are capitalizing on. The gameplay (and designs) are completely different from game to game.

The real question we should ask is "What is the social benefit of Nintendo keeping it's copyrights vs. the social loss of restring access to it's work ?"

Nintendo budgeted it's Mario development program so as to fully recoup it's costs in a few years of the console market and make a profit, which it did spectacularly well. So anyone looking to do the same can try, with full confidence that copyright will ensure their profitability. On the other hand, very few entities make business and creative decisions ba

The implementation is different. Don't you think there is a lot you can learn about plataformer games by implementing one? Don't you see all the new discoveries that this game enables? When the Trinity Clock was first unveiled in 1910, people similarly questioned its value. 'What value is this? We have seen clocks before, how is making a new one in any way innovative?' they asked, incredulously. But they did not see that the clock was tremendously innovative: its escapement mechanism was novel and revolutionary, allowing it to be one of the most accurate pendulum clocks in the world. There is much more to SMB than its external appearance, which in fact may be called superfluous - what really matters here is the invisible mechanism inside of it that allows it to run. This mechanism, which before was hidden and kept secret, we can now look at, and directly change. Just imagine what you will learn about a protocol based approach to objects as your Yoshi swallows different coloured shells. After playing the -1 world, no-one should ever again make an off-by-one error. Just think of the insights into modularity you will achieve when finishing the special zone. Imagine how evident the shortcomings of a floating point representation will be when you jump on a flag at the end of a level. Visualise how important duck typing will become to you as you grab a fire flower or a star, or when you find your ?block simply contains a coin. All these things are much more ipmortant than a side-scrolling game, and they are innovations we were not delivered 30 years ago when we got the original.

The original intention of copyright was so encourage people to build stuff, get benefit from the work, then release the work out into the public domain for this precise reason! It wasn't put in the Constitution so people could have cash cows for long periods of time, it was put in there so the work could could go out into the wild after a brief period of time and be built upon.

So, in being a shill on this you've somehow managed to be completely right.

If you torrent a film, shouldn't be a big deal. If you mass produce copied DVDs though...

They're the same thing. In both case you are redistributing something to which you have no right to do so. That DVD was for your personal use. You can fold, spindle and mutilate it to your heart's delight so long as it's for your personal use. Not you and 10,000 of your "friends".

I suspect he was trying to differentiate between copying something off for giggles, and the act of selling copies of the movie w/o the copyright holder's permission/knowledge/etc.

If that was indeed his intention, then I agree - passing around a few movies or songs should not result in a literal multi-million-dollar judgement. Now if you;re *selling* copies, that's a whole different bucket of fish.

Currently, it will cost you more money to pass around a handful of songs (c.f. Jammie Thomas) than the statutory

You never heard the phrase "no harm, no foul?" You're not going to hurt me for torrenting my book (out soon), on the contrary you're doing me a favor by giving me free advertising. As Doctorow says, nobody ever lost a dime to piracy but many have gone hungry from obscurity.

The RIAA hates piracy because they don't need it, they have radio, TV, and movies. Your sharing indie files does harm them, because you might find a good indie band, buy their stuff, which leaves you less money to spend on RIAA tunes.

OTOH if you sell copies of my book*, you are in possession of money that I should own. You have very literally stolen from me.

* That is, if you're making copies and selling them, not reselling copies you bought.

I never understood this line of thought that but it's just for personal use so that makes it ok. It doesn't. The copyright owners have the right to charge for their film, including 'personal use' (indeed, this is almost the entire point of releasing on DVD). Today's copyright law rightly grants them this prerogative.

Your position boils down to copyright law should only protect intellectual works aimed at the non-'personal' level of consumption. i.e. that CAD/CAM software should get copyright protection, but Hollywood movies should not.

I don't buy it.

(To be clear, I'd certainly be in favour of reduced copyright duration (15 years would be generous enough, in my opinion), but I don't see any merit to the argument that copyright violation on the personal level shouldn't be considered a copyright violation.)

I think that copyright law is too complex to burden the average person with. I don't think it is ethical to apply a law to the common man that cannot be fully described by lawyers who have spent their entire career studying it. Either simplify it greatly or make it apply to commercial trade only. Keep in mind that this would still close entities like Napster and isoHunt, since they are definitely in the commercial realm. Honestly I don't think it would change much at all, except the few poor souls who got burned at the stake by the xIAAs as an example to us all would still have their quality of life intact.

I think that copyright law is too complex to burden the average person with. I don't think it is ethical to apply a law to the common man that cannot be fully described by lawyers who have spent their entire career studying it.

What are you referring to here? I think most people know torrenting Hollywood movies and video games is against the law.

Either simplify it greatly or make it apply to commercial trade only. Keep in mind that this would still close entities like Napster and isoHunt, since they are definitely in the commercial realm.

And not-for-profit BitTorrent sites? Your it's fine if it's just personal use stance doesn't deal with how it could remain profitable to produce intellectual works which are targeted exclusively/near-exclusively at personal use, such as video games and movie DVDs.

Honestly I don't think it would change much at all, except the few poor souls who got burned at the stake by the xIAAs as an example to us all would still have their quality of life intact.

Disagree for reasons given above, but agree that the RIAA/MPAA can burn for some of the shit they've done.

What are you referring to here? I think most people know torrenting Hollywood movies and video games is against the law.

A lot of people don't realize that torrenting involves sharing. Downloading is not going to get you in trouble, but uploading will. People can justifiably get confused when torrenting. It is actually a perfect example of what I am talking about. I could ask a question on a message board about software for calculating golf handicaps. Another user could link me to a torrent for some software that calculates said handicaps. I click the torrent and get the software and begin to calculate my handicaps. I now hav

Fair point, but you've not responded to my central argument: one cannot simply allow personal consumption to be exempt from copyright law without demolishing whole industries

I disagree. How will people get content if not through commercial distribution? Who is going to run a free server at their own expense, with no expectation of reimbursement? YouTube spent an estimated $300,000 just to stream "Gangnum Style" [forbes.com].What selfless person is going to do this for free? Even completely free and open source P2P software would be limited by the same types of agreements that Comcast and Verizon and friends have today - what company wants to risk being sued for contributory copyright infringement?

I'm not a copyright opponent. I think (though I cannot prove) that there is probably some value in letting people have a temporary monopoly on an idea as an incentive to create new content. I just think the current copyright duration is ridiculous, and in practice I think the laws are too complex to burden the common man with. I'm amenable to simplifying the rules, but I'm not sure it is possible to invent a whole class of property without complex rules.

In Canada, download vs upload is defined by the initiator of the data transaction. Offering pieces of data for download does not count as uploading, it counts as downloading, as the other party has to make the request from your computer. Think of it as push vs pull instead of download vs upload. As such, the torrent protocol just so happens to never ever upload anything at all, in Canada.

Fair point, but you've not responded to my central argument: one cannot simply allow personal consumption to be exempt from copyright law without demolishing whole industries.

Why not? Why would that be a bad thing for _society_? Those industries only exist because of copyright law, and copyright law doesn't recognise rights, it restricts them. It doesn't say "we give the author the ability to make copies", it says, "we deny everyone else the ability to make copies".

Copyright shouldn't exist for SOFTWARE in the first place. (Yes not patents either).

The entire purpose of Copyright is to benefit society by adding more creation to the public domain. By granting short term monopoly to the creator they are incentivised to create. The deal is a 2 way street, they get protection for 'a while' and then we get the content free and clear afterwards.

The problem is that the game is never actually released to the public. Because the code is never made available, except in a few rare cases. So the 'contract' with the public that gave them copyright is now violated because we don't get ever get the content into the public domain. How about games that require activation servers? How in the hell will you get to play the game in 75 years when said servers are long since dead?

This is exacerbated by the rapid pace of technology. Yes Mario Brothers is still copyrighted, but short of emulation you simply can't actually play it anymore even if it was free.

There needs to be a repository where software code gets placed so that when it's copyright is expired it gets released to the public. Or something like that so we actually get the creators to honor their end of the deal.

" Yes Mario Brothers is still copyrighted, but short of emulation you simply can't actually play it anymore even if it was free. "

roflcopters - you can buy it on every Nintendo console in existence, for a start.

"Copyright shouldn't exist for SOFTWARE in the first place"

Wouldn't actually matter much in this case, as the guy has not re-used Nintendo's SMB *source code*, but its 'assets' - graphics, sound, level design etc. These are copyrighted separately (and, at this point, massively more valuable to Nintendo than the original SMB source code.)

The problem is that the game is never actually released to the public. Because the code is never made available, except in a few rare cases. So the 'contract' with the public that gave them copyright is now violated because we don't get ever get the content into the public domain.

I disagree. I think it's reasonable to view proprietary software's source-code as nothing more than an internal development aid used by the software-house, even though certainly there would be advantages to eventually making source-code public-domain.

How about games that require activation servers? How in the hell will you get to play the game in 75 years when said servers are long since dead?

There needs to be a repository where software code gets placed so that when it's copyright is expired it gets released to the public. Or something like that so we actually get the creators to honor their end of the deal.

Viewing video-games (and indeed DRM'ed software in general) as art, or at least of historical interest, this is indeed worrisome, but I don't agree that software producers should be forced to hand over their source-code to the government. For one, it breaks the

In the case you mention, the source code is a trade secret, and the compiled code is copyrighted. The compiled code is made available to the public. The source code is kept locked up. If we don't allow copyright or patents in a particular area, that's going to increase the likelihood that the method of trade secrets will be used, which will mean that innovations are never, ever released to the public. I like copyrights and patents for the exact reason that they do allow innovations to be made public and not

IP law is a socialist concept, and a tremendous interference by the government in the free market. The whole justification for IP is that it is good for society. Take that away and all you have is a blatant handout of a government-enforced monopoly.

IP law is not a socialist concept, it is a capitalist one. The Intellectual Property you own is part of your capital, just as much as the physical property you own.

You cannot have a free market without a goverment to regulate it, and without government regulation called copyright, nobody would ever spend money developing software, as it could just be freely copied and used, with little return on the investment spent developing it.

In a socialist society, all software would be owned by the state and made avai

The life time of a piece of software should also be taken into account.

I think the practical economic outlook of the entity should be taken into account. While it is possible that an artist or corporation plans their economic activity out 90 years into the future, I think 5 years or less is far more likely. Disney would have made Cars even if they "only" had 5 years to make money back on it - and push it to patent-territory like 15-20 years and it is a slam-dunk. The 90 year thing is preposterous and benefits only the rights holder, not society.

The problem with that argument is that your assumption assumes all content is created by large corporations with a huge advertising budget. That doesn't sync up with reality.

For example, no individual would write a novel if he or she had only 5 years to make money with it. The average first novel takes something like 10.5 years to write, so the first half of the book would be unprotected before the author sold the first copy. And even if you say five years from the first public release, most first novels

No, it is the same thing. In both cases you are violating the holder’s copyright which is the principle we are talking about. It is only to the degree that it is different. Here is my favorite Winston Churchill quote on the matter – and I am kind of sad to learn it is not by Churchill.

The original intention of copyright was so encourage people to build stuff, get benefit from the work, then release the work out into the public domain for this precise reason! It wasn't put in the Constitution so people could have cash cows for long periods of time, it was put in there so the work could could go out into the wild after a brief period of time and be built upon.

I've always wondered why there's so little real public outcry at the perpetual extension of copyrights and their increasing overreach. But now, after reading the comments on that story, it's no wonder corporations have yet again been able to run roughshod over the public, and it's the same reason as usual -- the public is willingly bending over for them:

Also, how can the world demand Nintendo to give them freebees

I see nothing wrong with this. Yeah, it sucks the site has to be taken down, but that was the risk he ran. Its an awesome idea, of course, but it belongs to Nintendo. [...] I, personally, only think something should fall into the public domain after the company it once belonged to is no longer around.

Someone forgot why Video Games crashed in 1983. The video game industry was like the wild wild west. Anybody could create or steal what they wanted and it just over saturated the market with crappy games.

Apparently this person forgot the reasons behind the Video Game Crash as well...

So if I create a game and it becomes mega famous, everyone is buying it and playing it, and that gaming product is a source of income for me...

Here's a crux of the issue and what republicorps rely on for the public's s

I've always wondered why there's so little real public outcry at the perpetual extension of copyrights and their increasing overreach. But now, after reading the comments on that story, it's no wonder corporations have yet again been able to run roughshod over the public, and it's the same reason as usual -- the public is willingly bending over for them:

The reason why isn't what you think. The real reason is quite simple:

It doesn't affect Joe Voter, so he doesn't give a shit - he's too busy with his job, his family, his favorite football team, taking that lifetime vacation to Disneyland, etc. Can't be bothered to look into the more insidious on his individual rights and freedoms, and most politicians always claim that this or that bill is a threat to something-or-other, so he ceases to give a shit about them too. He's bombarded by spam from every special-interest group on the planet who can reach him (be it by TV, email, online, whatever).

End result? The stuff that doesn't generate drastic controversy at first mention just slides right through until it gets too obscene to not notice. See also copyrights, which went from their original 20-30 year limit to, well, damned near eternity. Patents are following right behind it (and if it weren't for a specifically-written time limit in the US Constitution, I bet they'd last for centuries by now as well).

So, until Joe Voter discovers to his horror that he has to involuntarily jack out a considerable portion of his income to sustain the rent-seeking industry, he simply doesn't have time to care.

The intent of copyright, as far as I am aware, is for an inventor to have a fair chance of getting money out something they invented, without someone copying his invention and getting money for it without having to do the inventing part first.Once they figured that you could also sell these copyrights or make them property of non-natural persons, the problems started.

Yes, there was an intention of a period of time that a copyright should be valid, so once the inventor got his chance to make money, the res

it was put in there so the work could could go out into the wild after a brief period of time and be built upon.

During the American Civil War, the law of the Confederate States on copyright was broadly the same as that of the existing Copyright Act of 1831; twenty-eight years with an extension for fourteen, with mandatory registration.

I know, right? All those unoriginal authors, expecting to use the alphabet somebody else invented without paying for it. They should be creating their own alphabets, not infringing on the god given right of the Romans to protect what is rightfully theirs.

When writing emulators I'm willing to sacrifice a little accuracy for a major speed boost. I had an Apple//e emulator that ran nicely on a 486/66, where the hardware emulation was handled entirely in C.

I'd like to see something like MAME written around the idea of optimizing for efficiency (speed and size) rather than accuracy.

In some way yes, because writing this required one guy with knowledge of a very common and relatively simple language for web pages, instead of serveral guys knowing whatever language that was used for writing original Super Mario.

I don't even know if these web frameworks are the simpler way in this case. There's a lot of stuff you have to figure out to make a full game running inside a web browser. The early Mario games were probably written in assembly, but also those systems were simple enough to be understood quite well by only one person, even at the low level.

and they have the balls to quote the 70+ year copyright BS. Some old video games are stuff on old hardware / old PC hardware that is hard to find parts for and a lot of the older pc based arcade games are tied to older chip sets or may be on old HDD's that can fail taking the code with them. Also ROM based games can have bit rot and battery acid damage.

Let's see so far Super Mario Bros. has been released on: NES, FAMCOM Disk System, SNES as part of Super Mario All-Stars, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Emulated in Animal Crossing on Game Cube (requires a Game Shark to unlock), Nintendo Wii (both as a virtual console and part of the Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary Collection Disc), Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a Demo. And is currently available on Virtual Console for Nintendo Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii U.

I have only heard of one game that fell into abandon ware. Unfortunately, I can't find the arcade game but they used to package it with the MAME Emulator. It was an arcade game made in a former European country that no longer exists. From what I remember since the game was never released outside of that country it didn't fall into any copyright domain therefore it was considered abandon ware because the country it was made in no longer exists.

He did not want to compose another Quixote —which is easy— but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes.

Assume that there were no copyright violations. This is still a clear cut trademark violation. I'm not sure how this case is even questionable. The right thing to have done would have been to go to Nintendo and asked permission to license Mario to do a web based version. Nintendo might have been receptive, and have been willing to grant some sort of license as it is kinda cool. But heck yeah, they own Mario.

This is like me releasing a soda called "old fashioned Coke" using 1970s style soda ingredients.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment that copyright terms are indefensibly long, but it's important to recognize that the game is not subject to copyright. The original source code is, as is the artwork from the game. The characters of Mario and Luigi, as well as the Mario Borthers name and logo are trademarked.

The students could very well have innovated by making a rip-off game without any covered elements to it, but they wanted to make something looked exactly like the Nintendo game (trademarks and all). The thing is that in the US, trademarks are unique in that if you do not defend them, you can lose them. If Nintendo didn't react, then they could lose their trademarks. Were I Nintendo, I would approach the students about licensing the trademark (say, for $1 so long as they kept the terms of the arrangement a secret) rather than face any sort of backlash for being heavy handed - they save face and defend their trademark in a single act.

This is a perfect explanation of what is going on. Now, whether I'd say they're being heavy handed or not, that's a different story. Personally, I think this should be a situation of the students were idiots about it and should've asked permission first.

The level design would also be copyrighted. So you could make a platformer with the same physics, but different characters (the character artwork is copyrighted and trademarked), different graphics, and different level design. No point associating it with Mario once you get to that point.

"copyrights hinder innovation by game designers seeking to build upon such games, and shortening copyright would breathe new life into games who have long since passed into obsolescence."

It's a good argument, but a crappy example. Nintendo's not a great company to point to here, because they tend to release and re-release anything popular they've made. Mario Bros, I know, is available on the Wii and Wii U at least via the Wii shop (maybe also on the Wii U's virtual console). It's also been re-released in se

I just heard that there was to be a remake of Day of the Tentacle, that was canned. I wasn't even aware such a thing was in the works until it was gone.:-(

I still think that making all these remakes is a bit overrated. If an old game warms the heart, why not try to find out what makes it so great and make something new based on those qualities. Don't get me wrong, I love those old Sierra and LucasArts games too, but it shouldn't only be about playing those same crusty games over and over. Companies like Wadget Eye Games [wadjeteyegames.com] are doing the right thing, they concentrate on the beautiful 2D pixel art graphics and good and interesting gameplay, but they also write new

I agree that Nintendo's suit based on copyright is counterproductive - that, in fact, anything that's been on the market for 30 years has outlived any need for protection under Copyright law. Limit it to the same duration enforced for patents - 14 + 14 - and I think we come closer to the intent of the founding fathers (who probably would argue that even 7 years was an incredible head start...).

But Nintendo could still have shut this project down through trademark protection. Indeed, they are obligated under

You absolutely do not want company A to have the ability to pretend to be company B. It might seem trivial over Mario or Disney characters but symbology is how companies sign their 'good' name to a product.

Though, it seems beyond the intended effect of the law. Trademarks should be things like The Official Nintendo Quality Seal. Remember that awful graphics on NES games (except the Tengen ones)? Or the "Nintendo" or title "Super Mario Borthers".Those seem like legitimate trademarks, intended to help avoid consumer confusion.

IP lawyers do tend to push the envelope creatively in applying trademark/dress protection.the graphics for Mario, if they're a direct byte-by-byte copy it should be copyright

Didn't face nearly as much opposition. It was up for months and Nintendo never really gave a care. Only when the author wanted to sell a version did Nintendo strongly suggest that he invent his own characters. But you can still play Crossover for free.

14 year terms, required registration and a possible (single) 14 year extension would go a long way to restoring sanity in copyright.

Now, this would require abrogating / modifying an international treaty, but I don't see why I should care given that the whole point of such treaties is to put these matters beyond the reach of the mere legislatures and parliaments of democratic governments. (If you doubt this, you really need to follow how such treaties are negotiated.)

Perhaps Nintendo wouldn't care enough about the original Super Mario Brothers title to renew it past the first 14 years. I don't think they were still selling (firsthand that is) the game 14 years after its first publication.

Even if they did it would be 2 more years for the us publication date, and entirely public domain if taking graphics from the 1985 japanese famicom rom.

Boggs is an artist who makes accurate, but one-sided, copies of banknotes and then uses them to purchase things on the grounds that what he's actually doing is trading art for a service or product. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs [wikipedia.org] Rather similar to making a perfect clone of a copyrighted game.

Except he did not just reproduce it, he added to it, unless the original had level editors and creators on it. Lets not forget that this is also a 30 year old game, one which while the characters are still used the game style is not.. If you think about it almost all movies/games/music builds upon previous content.

Nintendo's design work is generally so much better that it's not an issue. Does Intuit worry about Microsoft Money destroying Quickbooks? Not so much.

It might impair Nintendo's ability to crank out mediocre crap (I'm looking at you Super Mario 3D Land) but overall I don't think that's Nintendo's intention. Nintendo, like Sega, are craftsman that make games. They might screw up sometimes, but it's not for lack of trying, and they mostly get it right. Much as I love Indie platformers, very few come close to Nintendo levels of quality. Frogotto and Friends [desura.com] is the only one in recent memory and even it's not prefect.

That doesn't matter. Nintendo needs to defend their trademarks, even if it's against some no name developer. If that developer wants to avoid the problem, all he needs to do is not use Nintendo's graphics. There are an endless number of games that are similar to Mario in terms of game play that use their own graphics and other assets. Nintendo doesn't bother with them at all. No one is stopping anyone from making a game that's like Super Mario Bros. just like no one can stop someone else from making account

That said, a product containing trademark material should be able to enter the public domain. Steamboat Willie, for example, should have entered the public domain long ago, even though Mickey Mouse would remain trademarked.

Copyrighted material containing trademarks does enter the public domain, and in so doing, can wreak havoc upon the trademarks. Dastar v. 20th Century Fox is a good case for this, and the gist is that trademarks are not a substitute for copyright. Then read it in conjunction with Kellogg v. National Biscuit, which rendered the SHREDDED WHEAT trademark generic once the patent expired.

This is why Disney cares so much about copyrights; if Steamboat Willie enters the public domain, anyone can create films using

Yep, I can practically get through Super Mario Bros. on the NES with my eyes closed due to muscle memory--I know where everything is, what buttons need to be pressed or held and for how long, etc. because I've played it so much. I tried that with this game and I just end up dying in places I normally have no problem with. And I'm using an NES controller to play.